Some rare insight into the minds of the super greedy

Before digging into the main course I want to make a point that gets easily lost these days: self-made zillionaires are not all greedy devious bastards looking to pocket granny’s hard earned pension and healthcare. This is a fact, I’ve personally interviewed a few people who handily qualify as self made zillionaires, where I occasionally talked to them at length about their progressive ideology and generous personal philosophy off the record. But there definitely are some zillionaires who could be described that way, especially around Wall Street. Courtesy of Ezra Klein’s interview with Chrysta Freeland, author of The Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, here’s a look into their self entitled, insular world: [Read more…]

Hometown Texas fundies accused of rape and murder

A few months ago Micah Moore stood as groomsman in Bethaney Deaton’s wedding. A few days ago he walked into a Midwest* police department and told investigators he had killed her at the request of her new husband Tyler. Bethany and Tyler met as freshman at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, just outside of Austin and moved to Kansas where they started and managed a prayer group. The motive according to Moore? Egad: [Read more…]

God skews Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson is confused, in a lot more ways than the obvious. Lately he’s confused because the magical voice that is either 1) in his head suggesting dementia or schizophrenia, or more likely 2) that he’s making up in a transparent cynical ploy to enrich himself, skewed him. Here’s my question to conservative god bots who may not be too far gone to see good and evil for what they plainly are: by your own arm waving claims an underdog from modest Christian roots overcame the might of a zillionaire religious heretic backed by dozens of fellow zillionaires and endorsed by modern day pharisees, despite what god fear’n unskewed pollsters found, and then riding high on the shoulders of a once in a century hurricane, aka Act of God, went on to crush the money changers and heretics, sweeping into power in what is in your minds a miraculous upset by preaching a message of healing the sick and helping the poor. Umm … which side are you and your pastor on again?